Changes made since CMake 3.14 include the following.
Preliminary support for the Swift language was added to the
Ninja generator:
The Swift support is experimental, not considered stable, and may change
in future releases of CMake.
- The Clang compiler variant on Windows that targets the MSVC ABI
but has a GNU-like command line is now supported.
- Support for the Clang-based ARM compiler was added with compiler id
ARMClang.
- Support was added for the IAR compiler architectures Renesas RX,
RL78, RH850 and Texas Instruments MSP430.
- Support was added for the IAR compilers built for Linux (IAR BuildLx).
- The CMAKE_GENERATOR environment variable was added
to specify a default generator to use when cmake(1) is
run without a -G option. Additionally, environment variables
CMAKE_GENERATOR_PLATFORM, CMAKE_GENERATOR_TOOLSET,
and CMAKE_GENERATOR_INSTANCE were created to configure
the generator.
- The cmake(1) --build tool --target parameter gained support
for multiple targets, e.g. cmake --build . --target Library1 Library2.
It now also has a short form -t alias, e.g.
cmake --build . -t Library1 Library2.
- The cmake(1) command gained a new --install option.
This may be used after building a project to run installation without
using the generated build system or the native build tool.
- The cmake(1) command learned a new CLI option --loglevel.
- The cmake(1) -E remove_directory command-line tool learned
to support removing multiple directories.
- The cmake(1) -E tar tool has been improved:
- It now continues adding files to an archive even if some of the files
are not readable. This behavior is more consistent with the
classic tar tool.
- It now parses all flags, and if an invalid flag was provided, a
warning is issued.
- It now displays an error if no action flag was specified, along with a
list of possible actions: t (list), c (create) or x (extract).
- It now supports extracting (-x) or listing (-t) only specific
files or directories.
- It now supports Zstandard compression with a --zstd option.
Zstandard was designed to give a compression ratio comparable to that
of the DEFLATE (zip) algorithm, but faster, especially for decompression.
- The add_custom_command() and add_custom_target() commands
gained a new JOB_POOL option that works with the Ninja
generator to set the pool variable on the build statement.
- The add_library() command ALIAS option learned to support
import libraries of the UNKNOWN type.
- The cmake_parse_arguments() command gained an additional
<prefix>_KEYWORDS_MISSING_VALUES output variable to report
keyword arguments that were given by the caller with no values.
- The execute_process() command gained a COMMAND_ECHO option
and supporting CMAKE_EXECUTE_PROCESS_COMMAND_ECHO variable
to enable echoing of the command-line string before execution.
- The file(INSTALL) command learned a new argument,
FOLLOW_SYMLINK_CHAIN, which can be used to recursively resolve and
install symlinks.
- list() learned new sub-commands:
PREPEND, POP_FRONT and POP_BACK.
- The message() command learned new types:
NOTICE, VERBOSE, DEBUG and TRACE.
- The string() learned a new sub-command REPEAT.
- The FindBoost module was reworked to expose a more consistent
user experience between its “Config” and “Module” modes and with other
find modules in general.
- A new imported target Boost::headers is now defined (same
as Boost::boost).
- New output variables Boost_VERSION_MACRO,
Boost_VERSION_MAJOR, Boost_VERSION_MINOR,
Boost_VERSION_PATCH, and Boost_VERSION_COUNT
were added.
- The QUIET argument passed to find_package() is no
longer ignored in config mode. Note that the CMake package shipped with
Boost 1.70.0 ignores the QUIET argument passed to
find_package(). This is fixed in the next Boost release.
- The input switch Boost_DETAILED_FAILURE_MSG was removed.
- Boost_VERSION now reports the version in x.y.z
format in module mode. See policy CMP0093.
- The FindCups module now provides imported targets.
- The FindEnvModules module was added to use Lua- and TCL-based
environment modules in CTest Scripts.
- The FindGLEW module now provides an interface more consistent
with what upstream GLEW provides in its own CMake package files.
- The FindPkgConfig now populates INTERFACE_LINK_OPTIONS
property of imported targets with other (non-library) linker flags.
- The FindPostgreSQL module learned to find debug and release
variants separately.
- Modules FindPython3, FindPython2 and FindPython
gained additional lookup strategies and controls, and a new default.
See policy CMP0094.
- Modules FindPython, FindPython2 and FindPython3
gain a new target (respectively Python::Module, Python2::Module
and Python3::Module) which can be used to develop Python modules.
- Modules FindPython3, FindPython2 and FindPython
gain capability to control how virtual environments are handled.
- The UseSWIG module learned to manage alternate library names
by passing -interface <library_name> for python language or
-dllimport <library_name> for CSharp language to the SWIG
compiler.
- The generator expressions
C_COMPILER_ID, CXX_COMPILER_ID, CUDA_COMPILER_ID,
Fortran_COMPILER_ID, COMPILE_LANGUAGE, COMPILE_LANG_AND_ID, and
PLATFORM_ID learned to support matching one value from a comma-separated
list.
- The $<CUDA_COMPILER_ID:...> and $<CUDA_COMPILER_VERSION:...>
generator expressions were added.
- The $<COMPILE_LANG_AND_ID:...> generator expression was introduced to
allow specification of compile options for target files based on the
CMAKE_<LANG>_COMPILER_ID and LANGUAGE of
each source file.
- A $<FILTER:list,INCLUDE|EXCLUDE,regex>
generator expression
has been added.
- A $<REMOVE_DUPLICATES:list>
generator expression
has been added.
- The $<SHELL_PATH:...> generator expression gained support for a list of paths.
- New $<TARGET_FILE*> generator expressions were added to retrieve the prefix, base
name, and suffix of the file names of various artifacts:
- $<TARGET_FILE_PREFIX:...>
- $<TARGET_FILE_BASE_NAME:...>
- $<TARGET_FILE_SUFFIX:...>
- $<TARGET_LINKER_FILE_PREFIX:...>
- $<TARGET_LINKER_FILE_BASE_NAME:...>
- $<TARGET_LINKER_FILE_SUFFIX:...>
- $<TARGET_PDB_FILE_BASE_NAME:...>
- The $<TARGET_OBJECTS:...> generator expression is now supported on SHARED,
STATIC, MODULE libraries and executables.
- The ctest_submit() command learned a new option: BUILD_ID.
This can be used to store the ID assigned to this build by CDash to a
variable.
- The ctest_update() command learned to honor a new variable:
CTEST_UPDATE_VERSION_OVERRIDE. This can be used to specify
the current version of your source tree rather than using the update
command to discover the current version that is checked out.
- If a feature specified by target_compile_features() is available
in the compiler’s default standard level, CMake 3.14 and below incorrectly
added unnecessary -std= flags that could lower the standard level.
This bug has been fixed in CMake 3.15. This behavior change may expose
bugs in existing projects that were relying on undocumented implementation
details. Specifying compile features only ensures that the compiler runs
in a mode that has those features, not that any specific standard level is
used or explicit -std= flag passed.
- CMake learned how to compile C++14 with the IBM AIX XL compiler
and the SunPro compiler and to compile C++20 with the AppleClang compiler.
- With MSVC-like compilers the value of CMAKE_<LANG>_FLAGS
no longer contains warning flags like /W3 by default.
See policy CMP0092.
- IBM Clang-based XL compilers that define __ibmxl__ now use the
compiler id XLClang instead of XL. See policy CMP0089.
- The file(REMOVE) and file(REMOVE_RECURSE) commands
were changed to ignore empty arguments with a warning instead of treating
them as a relative path and removing the contents of the current directory.
Changes made since CMake 3.15.0 include the following.
- In CMake 3.15.0 support for the GNU-like Clang compiler targeting the
MSVC ABI implemented CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD values 98 and 11 using
the corresponding -std= flags. However, these modes do not work with
the MSVC standard library. Therefore CMake 3.15.1 passes C++14 standard
flags even for C++98 and C++11. This is consistent with MSVC itself which
always runs in a mode aware of C++14.
- Preliminary Swift support added in 3.15.0 has been updated.
- CrayPrgEnv compiler wrapper support has been updated for the 19.06
release of the Cray Programming Environment for which the default linking
mode on XC Cray systems is now dynamic instead of static.
- In CMake 3.15.0 through 3.15.3, the EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL
directory property was regressed from pre-3.14 behavior and caused
targets within the directory to be excluded even from its own “all”.
This has been fixed.
The bug also existed in 3.14.0 through 3.14.6 and is fixed in 3.14.7.